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Club Ned cannabis cafe to open in Nederland

'It was kind of a no-brainer'

By Mitch Byars, Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
03/07/2014 06:16:32 PM MST

Updated:
03/17/2014 05:09:17 PM MDT

Cheryl Fanelli is hugged by friend Andi LaMartina, right, as David Fanelli, left, looks on. David and Cheryl Fanelli are preparing to open the first cannabis club in Boulder County. (Cliff Grassmick / Daily Camera)

After the passing of Amendment 64 more than a year ago, Nederland's Club Ned is set to be the only cannabis cafe — a private club where members can go to smoke marijuana — in Boulder County when it opens sometime in the next few weeks.

Cheryl Fanelli and her husband, David, who have lived in Nederland for 25 years, are set to open Club Ned at 154 Highway 72 after a 14-month battle to get approval from the town of Nederland and comply with state laws.

"It's awesome, it's really awesome," Cheryl Fanelli said. "It's been tough, but we've had the overwhelming support of the town, and without that it never would have gone through. The town deserves thanks for pushing it through."

While Amendment 64 made the purchase of recreational marijuana legal, smoking pot in public and shops is still illegal. So Fanelli said she wanted to open a place where people could gather together to toke while enjoying each other's company.

"People like to socialize, people like to get together," Fanelli said. "It's the reason bars are in existence. It's way cheaper to drink at home, but humans are sociable creatures."

But opening such a place for marijuana posed a number of issues. Club Ned's attorney Jeff Gard, who works with several local marijuana businesses, said the major hurdle was the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, which does not allow indoor smoking of any sort in most buildings.

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Gard said the solution was inspired by a Veterans of Foreign Wars post where he saw veterans smoking indoors.

"I just woke up in the middle of the night and figured out how to do it," Gard said.

In order to allow smoking indoors, Club Ned had to become a private club with various restrictions. The Fanellis could only hire a small number of workers, had to make a certain percentage of their revenue from membership dues, and the business needed to be BYOC — bring your own cannabis.

But Nederland's zoning did not allow for private clubs in Club Ned's zone, so the Fanelli's had to get the town of Nederland to change its zoning rules.

But Nederland Mayor Joe Gierlach said the town's zoning needed an update anyway, so the zoning changes were made to allow Club Ned to operate a private club.

"We needed to update our code for clubs in general, whether it's the Lion's Club or Club Ned," Gierlach said. We just wanted to update our code so that we had something to address this type of building use... I think we developed a pretty solid policy which makes sense for Nederland."

Gard said while there was a small group that opposed the zoning changes, most supported the club.

"It was a landslide in terms of popular opinion," Gard said.

Gard said with the legalization of recreational marijuana, the town needed a place where people could smoke it.

"The idea is if you don't provide somebody a place to go, people are just walking around smoking pot," Gard said. "So for the town it was kind of a no-brainer. You don't want people on Main Street in Nederland smoking weed, or going into the woods and burning the forest down."

Added Gierlach, "It just provides more options for people. Overall our goal is to comply with Amendment 64, which says to treat marijuana like alcohol."

Fanelli said she also wanted to open the club to show people a business could involve marijuana and comply with the state and all local guidelines.

"We are complying with everything, absolutely everything," she said. "There is so much stigma attached, we want to take the stigma away. So we wanted to be over-the-top respectable."

Club Ned is not the first attempt at a cannabis club in Boulder County. The Hive Co-Op, billed as Colorado's first cannabis-friendly coffee and tea shop, was opened in Lafayette in January 2013 but was shut down just a month later when the city passed a temporary moratorium on marijuana.

Gard said while there are some places that bill themselves as cannabis clubs in Denver, Club Ned is the first he knows of that has the expressed approval of the local government. He believes that as the recreational marijuana industry grows, more places like Club Ned will begin to pop up.

"If people follow a responsible model, do it as a labor of love, small-scale business, then anybody can do this anywhere as long as the zoning provides for private clubs," Gard said.

For Fanelli, she is just happy their 14 months of meetings and work finally paid off.

"I knew we'd win, but it's awesome," she said. "We persevered, we didn't give up. However we had to do it, however we had to make it work, whatever we had to do to follow the laws, we were going to make it work.

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